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Molecular Farming: a blessing or a curse?

© Bob Ewing

The Autumn Equinox has passed and the hours of daylight are becoming fewer. Here in Thunder Bay and, in many other Northern gardens, the harvest is complete or nearly so. We had our first frost last night.

As I was preparing this week's column, a Canadian Press article in the Chronicle-Journal [Monday, September 20, 1999, p.A8], (local paper), caught my attention. It was a report of the second annual International Molecular Farming Conference, co-hosted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Southern Crop Protection and Food Research Centre in London, Ontario, last week.

According to the article, molecular farming is a kind of fusion of agriculture and the pharmeceutical industry. It employs plants, animals, insects and cell cultures as vehicles to produce valuable proteins, such as vaccines, industrial enzymes, therapeutic proteins and a host of other beneficial products. Canada is apparently very eager to develop this technology and research and commercialization inititiaves are already expanding rapidly.

Last week's articlemolecular farming requires a closer look and was certainly relevant to the series. The controversy surrounding transgenic food has become more complicated, because there is an argument for the health benefits that are seemingly possible.

There is also an economic impact for the farmers who get two saleable items while growing just one. On the surface this "revolutionary marriage bewteen agriculture and health care" seems to be an important and positive development, whether we agree, with that or not, as the CP article says, it's likely to change the face of farming in the next millennium.

It is this last statement that concerns me the most. I agree that the face of farming, in fact the whole food production system, needs to change, I'm not yet convinced that molecular farming is the answer. I can't help but feel that we may straying down a wrong path when the answer lies right before our eyes. Does a move to molecular farming mean that the problems confronting food production now, the overuse of pesticides, and the degradation of the soil, for example, will continue? I will explore this in greater detail next week.

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